Sal; Monday, 20 March, 2023

Up again at 7 with the cleaners I had a slow breakfast and spent a bit of time packing before heading down to reception a little before 11 to checkout. I had debated whether to say something about the service, but the person on reception appeared to be in such a bad mood and only communicating in short sentences that it probably wasn’t worth saying anything – though it did solidify my view that the European reception staff of the hotel really should all look for other employment as they clearly aren’t suited to customer service.

I wandered down from the hotel to the end of the road and the lighthouse at the southern most tip of the island to take a few photos and then wandered back along the beach to the hotel.

I was back at the hotel about 45 minutes before my transfer back so I was able to grab some water and something a little stronger from the bar.

Unlike the journey out where the transfer stopped everywhere on the way back we only stopped at one other hotel, and bypassed lots of the rest of the hotels, all with a TUI transfer bus outside loading up, consequently we were the first of the transfer coaches to arrive at the airport and through checkin quite quickly.

By now I already knew that we were looking at a relatively lengthy delay as the inbound flight had been delayed by 45 minutes on it’s departure from Gatwick, and it looked like headwinds were slowing it down further, with it not due to land until about the time we were originally due to take off.

So I had a slow meander through the tiny airport, visiting the duty free shop and stopping off at the small café to grab a largish meal as I wanted to avoid having to buy anything on board.

As predicted the inbound plane finally pulled up onto stand at the same time as we should have been departing, but the ground crew got it turned around relatively quickly and only 75 minutes late we were taking off from Sal and heading back home.